Foster by Claire Keegan Review

A young girl goes to stay with her uncle and aunt for the summer where her life and theirs will change in subtle but powerful ways as they each help the other’s hidden trauma. But summer never lasts…

It’s rare that I agree with any of the cover blurbs - “a real jewel”, “a thing of finely honed beauty”, “a small miracle” - but this time I completely do: Claire Keegan’s Foster is a masterpiece.

The way Keegan tells her story is about as perfect an example of the writing adage “show don’t tell” as she shows us what her narrator’s home life was like with her biological parents in how her aunt and uncle address her various problems when she arrives at their farm. Similarly, there’s the unspoken question of why the girl is there in the first place, and why a childless couple could be such excellent parents.

As scant a story as there is - it’s mostly the girl doing chores with her aunt and uncle around the farm and house, and venturing out into the nearby village - it’s never boring. I think it was Stephen King who pointed out in “On Writing” that readers simply enjoy reading characters doing things, no matter how banal, and that’s probably one reason why.

Another reason might be how warm and kind John and Edna Kinsella are - they are the ideal parents that you rarely see in fiction, in the same way that Atticus Finch was an ideal father in To Kill a Mockingbird - and it’s an irresistible quality that many readers will respond to.

If the story had simply been just that - an idyllic summer where a neglected child experiences a wonderful home life, however briefly - this would still be an undeniably charming book. But Keegan adds another layer to the story of the Kinsellas by explaining why a couple so clearly perfect for parenting could somehow manage to be childless and, like so much about what makes this such a remarkable book, it’s a quietly devastating reveal that really puts it into the top tier of fiction.

It’s amazing that the narrative builds to such an emotional climax in such a short amount of time but it manages to do it, and, still more impressively, it’s earned. I don’t expect many will fail to be moved by that ending - I know I was in tears, in the best possible way. The ending - do you know how difficult it is to write a good ending? And Keegan does it beautifully. What a writer.

I don’t have a lot of good things to say about art awards but this year’s Booker did one positive thing which was introduce a lot of new readers, including me, to Claire Keegan via Small Things Like These and, like a domino effect, hopefully onto her other books, like Foster. Both novels are fantastic but Foster is really special. A small novel full of heart, impeccably written, with a wonderful cast of characters and a compelling narrative - Foster is the best book I’ve read all year and I couldn’t recommend it more.